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Contact Book vs Monica (Personal CRM): the honest comparison
Two products with the same goal, two different shapes. Here's where each one wins, where it doesn't, and how to pick.
At a glance
Monica is the elder statesman of the personal-CRM space - mature, open-source, and self-hostable. Contact Book is younger and lighter, with a sharper UI, live multi-tab updates, and a deliberately small surface. If you want to self-host on a Pi and tinker, Monica is hard to beat. If you want a clean, fast personal CRM that you don't run yourself, with bilingual support and a hosted plan that costs less than two coffees a month, that's us.
Contact Book vs Monica: feature comparison
When to pick which
Pick Contact Book when
Pick Monica when
Same goal, different shape
Both products want to give you a single calm place to keep the people in your life. Monica gets there with a comprehensive feature surface accumulated over years of community contribution. Contact Book gets there with a sharper, more opinionated subset and a fast UI on top.
The honest take: if you tested both and only had ten minutes per app, you'd probably feel us as faster and Monica as more configurable. Pick whichever feeling matters more.
Hosting + jurisdiction
Monica's hosted plan runs in France under EU law. Ours runs in Germany under German law. For most users this is academic - the EU GDPR baseline is the same. If you have a corporate or legal requirement specifically pointing at Germany, that's a clear win for us. If you don't, treat the two as equivalent on this axis and pick on UX.
Try Contact Book
Free plan, no credit card. We host in Germany. You can export and delete everything self-serve.
Written by
Julia Yukovich
Co-Founder + CEO
Julia is one of the Co-Founders. She handles design, product direction, and most of the support replies that arrive in the morning.
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